It was a horrible war, wasn't it?

Liara knows this because she finds him in his apartment clad in clinky clean armor, polishing a particle rifle he hasn't had to use. She's crossing her arms and giving him that strange look that mixes pity and worry and peculiarity and combined with the silence says more about him than it does about her. Javik doesn't even bother to look up, he isn't ashamed of his routine of maintaining guns that could be used. He could be attacked at any moment. The reapers could come back.

Liara knows that they are still alive in his mind.

Liara knows that it was a horrible war because the first time he embraces her, he grabs on to her tightly and he buries his face in the curve of her shoulder as if he were some starving varren trying to find a carcass in a pile of dirt. In his mind the reapers are still alive and in his mind she will be gone from him soon, just like everything else. Javik's arms tremble and shake all the way to his elbows and Liara has never seen him so afraid and vulnerable in the many years she's known him. She knows that it was a horrible war because even though she holds him close and strokes the back of his neck with her finger, stroking circles upon cascading circles, Liara knows that as much as she loves him, she will never fully bring him out of the war. She bites her lip with how desperately she wants to say "it's okay," but she knows it's not.

She knows that the reapers are still alive in his mind because of one night when she's drank one dark roasted coffee too many and she wakes up twirled between the sheets as if she had done battle with them. It's some ungodly hour in the morning that has no business existing, but despite that Javik is not at her side. She's never woken up with him next to her but it's an ungodly hour in the morning and she thought that at least she'd be able to see him there as reparations from the sleep that has evaded her. But he's not there, Javik is fighting in the war and Liara knows this because she finds him at the foot of the bed with the particle rifle he hasn't had to use. The reapers still exist and because they still exist he cannot sleep without a gun in his hand and a scowl on his face. They never left and could attack at any moment, they're already harvesting his dreams.

Liara sees the man she loves, loves so dearly, and she knows that he is still fighting reapers and that she cannot do anything to help him but bring him a blanket.

It was a horrible war, but at least he can be warm as he fights it.